New here, trying to get started on my first IF

[IF_noob]

@Cyris

I have recently discovered Inform 7 and am quite enthralled at its premise, to say the least. As interested in adventure games as I am, however, I am not sure how I would go about making one.

I came up with a story for my IF (I can post a summary here if requested) and thought of all the characters and locations involved, but I’m not sure how the puzzles will be implemented, or even some of the basic functions.

For example, my story takes place in a city, and the player has to drive around by car to go from location to location, with more places being unlocked as the story progresses. However, I ran into a number of problems with this. How do I keep the player from hitting the road without his car? It would also be silly for the player to still be in his car while indoors, so how do I prevent him from going to certain places while in his car? How do I allow the player to visit all the relevant locations from his car and only from his car? How do I prevent the player from going to locations he has not unlocked and break the script?

And what’s the best way for me to handle scenes changing over the course of the story? The first puzzle in my game has the player going to the police to inform them of a crime scene he has just discovered. When he goes back to the scene later, the police will be all over the place, conducting their investigation. How am I going to make everything in the scene operate differently when the police are there?

And that’s just the problems that are readily apparent at this point. I’ll probably run into many more as I progress in this project.

OMG you’ve just described the problems I’ve been having with someone’s game.
It’s a gain and loose points game (pickups).

Right away you see a motorcycle.
Get on the motorcycle for 50 points and go north.
You can’t go in any other direction than north.
Now you have a choice of east or west.
After a series of directions, after either choice, I got stuck.
To the west was a car I could switch to, but I couldn’t move.
To the east was a hill leading to a track, but I could not go on.

I found out when I was riding the motorcycle, it told me I was walking with it.
This means I could take it indoors, but not on the second floor.

I probably got an older version of it, but I think like you he just got lazy and finished it too early (his spelling wasn’t great either).

[I4L]

@Cyris

And what’s the best way for me to handle scenes changing over the course of the story? The first puzzle in my game has the player going to the police to inform them of a crime scene he has just discovered. When he goes back to the scene later, the police will be all over the place, conducting their investigation. How am I going to make everything in the scene operate differently when the police are there?

I’d also like to ask if maybe this is a misunderstanding of the scene mechanic? Try not to think of a scene as a place or as something like a “set”. A scene is more like a series of events that takes place based on certain factors. So initially, you may have a scene called “Before the Murder” and then a scene “After the Murder”. But the player won’t be “going back” to the scene in the sense of being the scene of a crime or anything like that. They would complete the “Before the Murder” scene (or not) and then later come back to the same location (or not) for a different scene called “After the Murder”.

[capmikee]

A scene is really just a flag that turns itself on or off at certain times. You can have things happen when a scene begins or ends, and you can check if a scene is currently happening. That’s about it.